UFC Undisputed 2010 Walkthrough & Strategy Guide

Want to be a fighter? Here's your chance! This section will list what Career Mode is all about, what you can do, what you need to do, how to build up your fighter, and ultimately how to succeed and retire in peace once it's all said and done.

First, note that going through Career Mode gives you a higher potential of points for your fighter than the "Create A Fighter" Mode from the main menu. Sure, it may take you several hours to flesh out his career and give him all the points you want to, but at least he'll be able to stand toe-to-toe with the best real-life fighters.

Career Mode will take your fighter through a twelve-year career, which translates into about 52 fights. Once he retires—which happens automatically, and you cannot retire early—he is unable to be played further in Career Mode, but he is still accessible in Exhibition.

Starting Out

Starting Career Mode is as simple as picking your fighter's name and appearance, birth city, and so on. Most of it is cosmetic, but be sure to go through each option, because important ones like body height cannot be changed later.

When you come to your starting stats—for reasons we'll explain in a bit—it's best to pour as many points as you can into a select group of skills. Seeing as most fights end with KOs or TKOs, you should probably put most of your points into Standing Striking Offense and Defense, and maybe some Takedown Defense so you can stay standing as long as possible. Don't worry, you'll have plenty of time to get your numbers high in other areas.

There are some categories that are missing from Career Mode compared to Create A Fighter. For example, in Create A Fighter, you can assign techniques (attacks that are performed by holding LB/L1) to your rookie. In Career Mode, this is missing, because you learn techniques during the course of your fighter's training. Just be sure to run through every category, and double-check all your options. Note that when you select your fighter's handedness, that hand is automatically more powerful than the other one, so if you're a right-hander, most of your attacks should be right-handed, especially when you're ready to finish the fight.

Speaking of which, you'll want to know exactly how you're going to want to fight. Are you a pure striker? Do you want to primarily use submissions or throws? You need to know how you want to fight, because it will play into what techniques and strategies you use. Because you only have a limited time in Career Mode, you don't want to waste time learning techniques and training skills you'll never use. Plan what you're going to do ahead of time to find the most success once you get started.

Finish that up, and you'll be sent to the training facility. Once there, you'll have your first fight against a fighter at the lowest difficulty setting. You should handily win the fight merely by swinging away, and then the training will start in earnest. Between fights, you will choose an action to take every week. You can choose to spar, train, learn new techniques, rest, form a gameplan against your next opponent, or (if you previously agreed to it) perform a UFC popularity-boosting event. We'll go over these here.